Closed Bug 688237 Opened 14 years ago Closed 9 years ago

QuickTime Plugin on OS X does not load in 64-bit Firefox when not cached by another application

Categories

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect)

Product:
Core Graveyard
Component:
Plug-ins
Version:
6 Branch
Platform:
x86
macOS
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: timsutton, Unassigned)

Details

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8) AppleWebKit/535.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/14.0.835.122 Safari/535.1 Steps to reproduce: Launched Firefox before Safari or Chrome was ever launched, as a new user. Firefox is running in 64-bit mode. Went to about:plugins to see if the Quicktime plugin is listed as loaded, and tried to play an ad on apple.com Actual results: Quicktime Plugin is not loaded, nor will it play the ad. If I would quit Firefox, run Safari and visit the Help -> Installed plugins... page, I see that Safari has loaded the QT plugin. If I close Safari and re-open Firefox, the plugin now loads without issue. I can confirm that the issue seems to be a cache in the user folder, because if I completely delete the user's home directory, I need to repeat this process to get Firefox to load the QT plugin when in 64-bit mode. The issue doesn't ever occur if Firefox is set to run in 32-bit mode. Expected results: Firefox should load the QT plugin without it needing to be first loaded by another browser. It's not an issue with Safari or Chrome, nor does the issue happen with the Flash plugin, it only seems to be occurring with the QuickTime plugin. (/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/QuickTime Plugin.plugin) I've tested about 5 different OS X images used in labs and offices, as well as a completely fresh install of 10.6.3 off a DVD, later upgraded to 10.6.8v1.1 and see the issue with both versions of OS X and a fresh new user folder without the plugin previously cached by Safari or Chrome
This sounds like it's at least partly an Apple bug. I'd ask you to test with other non-Apple browsers, but Google Chrome and Opera are both 32-bit only. Does the bug still happen (in a new account, in 64-bit mode) if you first run Firefox in 32-bit mode? As for the "cache", I suspect it's some QuickTime-specific settings in ~/Library/Caches/QuickTime or ~/Library/Preferences/QuickTime Preferences.
> Does the bug still happen (in a new account, in 64-bit mode) if you first run > Firefox in 32-bit mode? Does the bug still happen if you first run Firefox in 32-bit mode and use it to load a QuickTime plugin?
Component: General → Plug-ins
Product: Firefox → Core
QA Contact: general → plugins
Hi Steven, No it doesn't. Running it for the first time as a new user in 32-bit mode, it loads as expected. If I would then switch it to 64-bit mode the plugin loads as well. It's just getting the initial load for a user who's never loaded the plugin to happen in FF 64-bit mode that seems to have issues. (In reply to Steven Michaud from comment #2) > Does the bug still happen if you first run Firefox in 32-bit mode and use it > to load a QuickTime plugin?
Tested with Opera 12.02 since it's now 64-bit on mac, confirmed to load the QuickTime plugin on a fresh profile. So Chrome, Safari and Opera all load QuickTime on a fresh profile but Firefox does not. Chrome is still 32-bit, I agree, but now we have 2 64-bit browsers that load QuickTime on a fresh profile.
It looks like it may have gotten even worse with Mountain Lion. Firefox will refuse to load the QuickTime plugin even if other browsers have loaded it. The only way I've gotten Firefox to now load QuickTime is enabling 32-bit mode, starting Firefox which does load QuickTime, and then switching it back to 64-bit mode. After that every subsequent 64-bit launch will correctly load QuickTime.
What you say about QuickTime on Mountain Lion rings a bell. If I remember right, I saw this and diagnosed it as a QuickTime bug. When I have time I'll try to dig up my notes, or reproduce the problem. But it'll probably be a couple of weeks before I have time.
Considering 64-Bit Opera manages to load the same QuickTime plugin without any issues on a fresh profile means that either it's a Firefox bug, or the Opera devs implemented a workaround.
This is an issue for lab machines, since all user profiles get wiped every night, every user that logs in, gets a fresh profile. As a workaround, we forced Firefox on all lab machines to exclusively run in 32-Bit mode.
Cpuroast: If I remember right, the QuickTime bug was that a settings file needed to be created in ~/Library/Preferences before the QuickTime plugin would load. Or maybe it was a QuickTime preference in .GlobalPreferences.plist. If I'm right, it should be easy for you to make this file (or setting) part of the image you use to re-image your lab machines.
I'm having this issue with our Deployment of Firefox 15 at Penn State. Do you know which file is needed to be created? Also, is there a way to configure the Firefox application to start in 32bit mode besides the Info Screen. The info screen is a per user setting, and I'd like a system wide fix for this issue. Thanks
Searching through bugzilla, I found that I actually opened a bug on the QuickTime bug, and reported it to Apple. Not surprisingly Apple hasn't responded. See bug 780284.
I'm marking this bug as WONTFIX per bug #1269807. For more information see - https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/10/08/npapi-plugins-in-firefox/
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 9 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
Product: Core → Core Graveyard
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